[Wittrs] Re: [Wittrs]: Nominalism / Sean
- From: brendan downs <downs_brendan@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:26:46 +1200
True but I was trying to make sense of it i.e to naturalise "computational
nominalism"???
Deacartes writes on the idea of the "ghost in the machine" and I do somewhat
entertain the idea of dualism but in a different sense. The mind/body problem
can easily be drawn as how does something immaterial act on something material?
and yes I will look at Stuart and Bruces.
Brendan
> Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:31:59 +0000
> From: jrstern@xxxxxxxxx
> To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [Wittrs] Re: [Wittrs]: Nominalism / Sean
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, brendan downs <wittrs@...> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > I havent read much on this subject, but I tend to think the mind is
> > identical to the brain or that the word "mind" is cross categorial usage of
> > a word to describe the brain. e.g. an anthropologist might refer to a cat
> > as a feline, and say a vet it might call it a cat. a prehistoric example
> > but I think it express my point. I more or less accept sciences thought on
> > the subject. I'm not to sure on thinking, maybe I could use the same
> > example and as above, thinking being the process of chemical and electrical
> > activity. sorry it doesnt help you much, computational process
> > umm...Chomsky might have some ideas for you, symbolic brain models, fuzzy
> > logic, neural networks and pattern recognition. I hope that can be of
> > help...naturalising "computational nominalism" a nominalist would say the
> > mind doesnt exist, it is not a physical entity. they would go further and
> > say it is a descriptive concept for the brain.
>
> Oh, well, if you want to see what the debate looks like, I think Stuart and
> Bruce are pretty well covering it!
>
> But a nominalist, by your own recommendation, doesn't hold any
> particular view on whether "the mind exists", that's either an
> epistemological or an ontological statement, as you like. It may
> well be that a particular set of physical states constitutes a
> mind, with nothing abstract about it except its membership in an
> abstract class that includes other minds.
>
> Certainly, Chomsky, and Dennett, and Fodor, and Searle, and some
> others, but not so much Wittgenstein, I guess.
>
> But we don't even need to ask about minds in order to find
> the limits of our knowledge. Even asking about computation,
> just the simple stuff that runs your browser or prints your
> paycheck, is enough to show some great divides, just look at
> the last message from Rob. What on earth is computation?
> And isn't it just amazing, that we hardly have even the start
> of a credible answer for that question!
>
> After all, Wittgenstein brought up even a simple numeric
> sequence, and stirs up great arguments about something even
> that simple, and if that's not clear, are we ready to even start
> to talk about computation? Or perhaps, if we consider computation,
> we can say something more about those sequences.
>
> Josh
>
>
>
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